Our points of view were very different; now they have converged around peace. No one here is interested in war anymore.

A civilian is shot on a city street; a television cameraman, waiting at a dangerous crossroads to see somebody killed or mutilated, films the shooting; a soldier sent by the United Nations as a “peacekeeper” to a city officially called a “safe area” watches, unsure what to do and paralyzed by fear. The elements of this troubling collage are also elements of what some military analysts are now calling “postmodern” or “future” war. In their analysis, the wars between states and their armed forces that dominated history for several centuries … are now being replaced by a new kind of conflict, like that in Sarajevo, in which armies and peoples become indistinguishable. In such wars, states are replaced by militias or other informal – often tribal – groupings whose ability to use sophisticated weaponry is very limited.